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The Adult Blind of Massachusetts

A Call to a Pressing Duty

BY FRANCIS H. ROWLEY, D.D.

WHEN we have visited the Perkins Institution and noted what is being done for sightless children in that noble school, we have seen only one side of the picture, and that the brightest, the fairest. We have not thought of the thousands of sad-hearted, silent men and women sitting in the dreary solitude of conscious isolation; some in lonely homes where all that can he done for them is to provide food and raiment and shelter; and some dragging out the weary years as objects of public charity in almshouses. This is the blindness that appals (sic) one when he broods over it.

By the very purpose and clearly defined terms of its charter, the Perkins Institution must restrict its activities almost entirely to the educating and training of sightless boys and girls who are not yet nineteen years old. To ask it to give attention to the problem of assisting and industrially instructing the adult blind of Massachusetts is to ask it to turn aside from the one specific task it has set itself, and for the accomplishment of which it has made itself so thoroughly efficient.

Others must take up this latter work, than which there is no other demanding at the present hour more imperatively our thoughtful consideration as citizens interested in the unfortunate of the State. The census of Massachusetts for 1895, the last that was available for our use, gives the number of blind as 3933: 2267 males and 1716 females; 231 are classed among paupers, eighteen among the insane. Out of this 3983 there were but 333 under the age of fifteen, and 213 were under twenty and over fifteen; these last have now joined the appalling list of the adult blind, and, making allowances for deaths, swell its total to the neighborhood of 3800. Of these there are some who make no appeal. Blessed with an income sufficient for their support, or cared for by friends able to provide them with such instruction or pastimes as they desire, they are ready to aid the less favored blind, rather than ask anything. for themselves. Others, profiting by the training received at the Perkins Institution or elsewhere, are self-supporting. Dr. Anagnos tells me that about sixty per cent of the graduates of his school are earning their own living in whole or in part. But the vast majority are among the poor, dependent upon others than themselves or their immediate family for the means of subsistence. Even where not compelled to receive aid from strangers, the lot of hundreds of these is one of irrepressible loneliness and weariness, because, unable to read or write, and uninstructed in any form of useful employment, they are doomed to sit in idleness both of mind and body.

After the first shock that comes to those, suddenly losing their sight there develops in the lives of no small proportion of them the ambition to overcome the disadvantage that illness or accident has brought about, and to outwit misfortune by a skillful training of the senses that are left. The achievements in this direction seem often too wonderful to be true. When one thinks of the builder of the great American yachts, that have kept on this side the Atlantic, the cup England has wanted so long; of Prescott, and all he accomplished after losing his sight; of Mr. Fawcett, post-master general under Gladstone; of Huber, the celebrated naturalist; of William E. Cramer, the journalist; of George Mathison, the blind preacher of Edinburgh, whose published works are among the finest literary and religious productions of the age -- when one thinks of what these men have attained there seems to be almost nothing that lies beyond the reach of the patience and persistency of those deprived of sight. We are doing a most serious wrong to the blind by the limitations we put upon them in our thinking of them as willingly the, objects of charity. There are thousands of them who are by nature as loath as you or I to accept of charity. Help to help themselves that is what they long for.

Now what is being done in Massachusetts for it 3800 adult blind?

1. Of the Charlotte Harris bequest of $80,000, that by the decision of the court was adjudged in 1878 as primarily intended for the Perkins Institution, and which therefore, passed into the control of the institution's trustees, one-third, or strictly speaking, the income from one-third of this fund -- has been used by the institution to assist in the maintenance of blind persons of adult age. Though by reason of a lower rate of interest this income has been somewhat lessened, up to the present time the amount given the beneficiaries has not been reduced.

2. In connection with the Perkins Institution, though really independent of it, there has been carried on a small mattress factory and chair-caning establishment, giving employment, at present, to fifteen man and four women, besides furnishing, at times, the opportunity to four or five apprentices, of learning the trades of matress-making and chair-caning. More than $40,000, however, was put into this undertaking before it seems to have shown a profit instead of a loss.